Beacon Hill

Community Information

Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, that along with the neighboring Back Bay is home to more than 27,000 people in 2010.

It is a neighborhood of Federal-style rowhouses and is known for its narrow, gaslit streets and brick sidewalks. Today, Beacon Hill is regarded as one of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in Boston.

Because the Massachusetts State House is in a prominent location at the top of the hill, the term “Beacon Hill” is also often used as ametonym in the local news media to refer to the state government or the legislature.

Etymology

Like many similarly named areas, the neighborhood is named for the location of a former beacon atop the highest point in central Boston. The beacon was used to warn the residents of an invasion.

Geography

Beacon Hill is bounded by Storrow Drive, and Cambridge, Bowdoin, Park and Beacon Streets. It is about one mile square,^[4][9] and situated along the riverfront of the Charles River Esplanade to the west, just north of Boston Common and the Boston Public Garden. The block bounded by Beacon, Tremont and Park Streets is included as well. Beacon Hill has three sections: the south slope, the north slope and “Flat of the Hill”, which is a level neighborhood built on landfill. It is west of Charles Street and between Beacon Street and Cambridge Street.

Located in the center of the Shawmut Peninsula, the area originally had three hills, Beacon Hill and two others nearby; Pemberton Hill and Mount Vernon were leveled for Beacon Hill development.^{[11][nb 1]} Between 1807 and 1832 Beacon Hill was reduced from 138 feet in elevation to 80 feet. The shoreline and bodies of water such as the Mill Pond had a “massive filling”, increasing Boston’s land mass by 150%. Charles Street was one of the new roads created from the project.^[12]

Before the hill was reduced substantially, Beacon Hill was located just behind the current site of the Massachusetts State House.

History

17th century

The first European settler was William Blaxton, also spelled Blackstone. In 1625 he built a house and orchard on Beacon Hill’s south slope, roughly at the location of Beacon and Spruce street. The settlement was a “preformal arrangement”. In 1630 Boston was settled by the Massachusetts Bay Company. The southwestern slope was used by the city for military drills and livestock grazing. In 1634 a signal beacon was established on the top of the hill. Sailors and British soldiers visited the north slope of Beacon Hill during the 17th and 18th centuries. As a result, it became an “undesirable” area for Boston residents. “Fringe activities” occurred on “Mount Whoredom”, the backslope of Beacon Hill.

18th century

Beacon Street was established in 1708 from a cow path to the Boston Common. John Singleton Copley owned land on the south slope for pasture for his cows and farmland.

In 1787 Charles Bulfinch designed the Massachusetts State House. Its construction was completed in 1795, replacing the Old State House in the center of Boston.

The Mount Vernon Proprietors group was formed to develop the trimount area, when by 1780 the city’s neighborhoods could no longer meet the needs of the growing number of residents.Eighteen and a half or 19 acres of grassland west of the State House was purchased in 1795, most of it from John Singleton Copley. The Beacon Hill district’s development began when Charles Bulfinch, an architect and planner, laid out the plan the neighborhood. Four years later the hills were leveled, Mount Vernon Street was laid, and mansions were built along the street. One of the first homes was the Harrison Gray Otis House on Cambridge Street.

19th century

Development

Construction of homes began in earnest at the turn of the century, such as: freestanding mansions, symmetrical pairs of houses, and row houses. Between 1803 and 1805, the first row houses were built for Stephen Higginson.

In the 1830s, residential homes were built for wealthy people on Chestnut and Mt. Vernon Streets. Some affluent people moved, beginning in the 1870s, to Back Bay with its “French-inspired boulevards and mansard-roofed houses that were larger, lighter, and airier than the denser Beacon Hill.

In the early 19th century, there were “fringe activities” along the Back Bay waterfront, with ropewalks along Beacon and Charles Streets.

South slope

The south slope “became the seat of Boston wealth and power.  It was carefully planned for people who left densely populated areas, like the North End. The residents of opulent homes, called the Boston Brahmins, were described by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a “harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy”. They had “houses by Charles Bulfinch, their monopoly on Beacon Street, their ancestral portraits and Chinese porcelains, humanitarianism, Unitarian faith in the march of the mind, Yankee shrewdness, and New England exclusiveness.”

Literary salons and publishing houses were founded in the 19th century. “Great thinkers” lived in the neighborhood, including Daniel Webster, Henry Thoreau and Wendell Phillips.

Flat of the Hill

Development began in the early 19th century. Single family homes often had stores on the first floor for retailers, carpenters and shoemakers.Today, many of the 19th century waterfront landmarks, such as the Charles Street Meeting House, are found far from the water due to the filling that has taken place since then.

North slope

The north slope was the home of African Americans, sailors and Eastern and Southern European immigrants.

The north slope of Beacon Hill, in particular the area around Belknap Street (now Joy Street) became home to more than 1,000 African Americans beginning in the mid-1700s. While this community is often described as arising from domestic workers in the homes of white residents on the south slope of the Hill, property records indicate that the African American community on the north slope was already well-established by 1805, before the filling-in of the south slope was completed, and so before that slope of Beacon Hill came to be considered an affluent area.

Many African Americans in the neighborhood attended church with the whites, but did not have a vote in church affairs and sat in segregated seating. The African Meeting House was built in 1806 and by 1840 there were five African American churches. The African Meeting House on Joy Street was a community center for black abolitionists. Frederick Douglas spoke there, and William Lloyd Garrison formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society at the Meeting House. It became a “hotbed and an important depot on the Underground Railroad.”

Blacks and whites were largely united on the subject of abolition. Beacon Hill was one of the staunchest centers of the anti-slavery movement in the Antebellum era.

The Republican Party was founded by abolitionists. One of the earliest black Republican legislators in the United States was Julius Caesar Chappelle (1852-1904), who served as a legislator in Boston from 1883-86 and whose district included the Beacon Hill area. Chappelle was a popular, well-liked politician and was covered by many of the black newspapers in the United States.

Blacks migrated to Roxbury and Boston’s South End after the Civil War.

Immigrants

In the latter part of the 19th century, Beacon Hill absorbed an influx of Irish, Jewish and other immigrants^.

Many homes built of brick and wood in the early 19th century were dilapidated by the end of the Civil War and were razed for new housing. Brick apartment buildings, or tenements were built. Yellow brick townhouses were constructed, generally with arched windows on the first floor and a low ceiling on the top, fourth floor. Residential homes were also converted to boarding houses.

The north slope neighborhood transitioned as blacks moved out of the neighborhood and immigrants, such as Eastern European Jews, made their homes in the community. The Vilna Shul was established in 1898, and the African Meeting House was converted into a synagogue.^[6][15]

20th century

Better transportation service to the suburbs and other cities led a boom to the city’s economy at the beginning of the 20th century. New buildings, “compatible with the surroundings”, were built and older buildings renovated. To ensure that there were controls on new development and demolition, the Beacon Hill Association was formed in 1922. Into the 1940s there were attempts to replace brick sidewalks, but the projects were abandoned due to community resistance.

Banks, restaurants and other service industries moved into the “Flat of the Hill”, with a resulting transformation of the neighborhood.

Red-light districts operated near Beacon Hill in Scollay Square and the West End until a 1950s urban renewal project renovated the area.^[29] To prevent urban renewal projects of historically signfificant buildings in Beacon Hill, its residents ensured that the community obtained historic district status: south slope in 1955, Flat of the Hill in 1958, and north slope in 1963. The Beacon Hill Architectural Commission was established in 1955 to monitor renovation and development projects. For instance, in 1963, 70-72 Mount Vernon Street was to be demolished for the construction of an apartment building. A compromise was made to maintain the building and its exterior and build new apartments inside.

21st century

Wealthy Boston families continue to live at the Flat of the Hill and south slope. Inhabitants of the north slope include Suffolk University students and professionals.

Historic district and national landmark

In 1955 the neighborhood was made the Historic Beacon Hill District. It was the first such district in Massachusetts, created to protect historic sites and manage urban renewal. Supporting these objectives are the non-profit Beacon Hill Civic Association and the city’s Boston Preservation Alliance organizations. According to theMassachusetts Historical Commission, the historic districts “appear to have stabilized architectural fabric” of Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1962.

Sites of interest

Black Heritage Trail

The Boston African American National Historic Site is located just north of Boston Common. The historic buildings along today’s Black Heritage Trail^® were the homes, businesses, schools and churches of the black community.Charles Street Meeting House was built in 1807, the church had seating that segregated white and black people.The Museum of African American History, New England’s largest museum dedicated to African American history is located at the African Meeting House, adjacent to the Abiel Smith School. The meeting house is the oldest surviving Black church built by African Americans.^[34][36] The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial are located at Beacon Street and Park Street, opposite the Massachusetts State House.

Massachusetts State House

The Massachusetts State House, located on Beacon Street, is the home of the Commonwealth’s government. The gold-domed state capitol building was designed by Charles Bulfinch and was completed in 1798. Many of the country’s state capitol buildings were modeled after the State House.

Organizations

The Club of Odd Volumes, a historic organization on Mount Vernon Street, serves as a Bibliophiles club, library, and archive. The Headquarters House, also known as William Hickling Prescott House, is a museum run by the Society of Colonial Dames. The country’s oldest legal organization, the Boston Bar Association, is on Beacon Street.^[39]Beacon Hill Village was the first formal Elder Village in the United States.

Neighborhoods

Beacon Hill is predominantly residential, known for old colonial brick row houses with “beautiful doors, decorative iron work, brick sidewalks, narrow streets, and gas lamps”. Restaurants and antique shops are located on Charles Street.

Louisburg Square is “the most prestigious address” in Beacon Hill. Its residents have access to a private park and live in “magnificent Greek Revival townhouses.” Nearby is Acorn Street, often mentioned as the “most frequently photographed street in the United States.” It is a narrow lane paved with cobblestones that was home to coachmen employed by families in Mt. Vernon and Chestnut Street mansions.

The Harrison Gray Otis House on Cambridge Street was built in 1796. Charles Bulfinch designed this house, and two additional houses, for the businessman and politician who was instrumental in Beacon Hill’s development and Boston becoming the state capital. The Otis House also houses the headquarters of Historic New England, previously known as Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Other notable houses are the Francis Parkman House and an 1804 townhouse, now the Nichols House Museum.The Nichols House “offers a rare glimpse inside [the] Brahmin life” of Rose Standish Nichols, a landscape artists.

See also: List of notable addresses in Beacon Hill, Boston

Religious organizations

Religious organizations include the Vilna Shul, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, and the Unitarian Universalist Association headquarters. Church of the Advent is a Victorian Gothic Church, faced in brick with 8 massive carillon bells and a 172 foot spire. The Park Street Church, nicknamed “Brimstone Corner” in the 19th century, was used to store gunpowder during the War of 1812. Samuel Francis Smith first sang his song America the Beautiful at this church in 1831. Two years earlier William Lloyd Garrison spoke to the congregation about abolishing slavery. One of the few outposts of the small Protestant group the Swedenborgian Church is on Bowdoin Street, and was embroiled in controversy in 2013 over alleged extortion by a former mafioso.

Suffolk University

The Suffolk University and its Law School are adjacent to the Massachusetts State House and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The Suffolk University Law School was founded in 1906.

Transportation

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway stations in Beacon Hill are:^[17]

• Park Street T Station – junction of the Red and Green lines
• Bowdoin T Station – Blue Line
• Charles Street / Massachusetts General Hospital T Station – Red Line

MBTA Bus, MBTA commuter rail, and ferry services are also available.

Notable residents

Beacon Hill has been home to many notable persons, including:

• Louisa May Alcott
• John Albion Andrew
• William Blaxton, original owner of Beacon Hill
• Edwin Booth
• Peter Bent Brigham
• Charles Bulfinch
• John Cheever
• John Singleton Copley
• Michael Crichton
• Robert Frost
• James Gibson (Captain)
• John Hancock
• Chester Harding
• Teresa Heinz
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Julia Ward Howe
• Abigail Johnson
• Edward M. Kennedy
• John Kerry
• Henry Cabot Lodge
• James Russell Lowell
• Robert Lowell
• Mary Osgood
• Harrison Gray Otis
• Sylvia Plath
• William Prescott
• Eleanor Raymond
• C. Allen Thorndike Rice
• Henry Rice
• David Lee Roth
• George Santayana
• Anne Sexton
• Robert Gould Shaw
• Carly Simon
• Charles Sumner
• Uma Thurman
• David Walker
• Gretchen Osgood Warren
• Fiske Warren
• Daniel Webster
• Jack Welch

Portrayals

• Published in 1937, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand satirizes the upper-class white residents of Beacon Hill.
• On Beacon Street, the Bull and Finch Bar was inspiration and source of exterior shots for the Cheers television show.
• Make Way for Ducklings (Viking, 1941) is a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey. Most of the story is set at the foot of Beacon Hill, especially the route taken by the fictional Mrs. Mallard and her children on foot across Beacon Street. It is commemorated every year in May by a parade through Beacon Hill to the Boston Public Garden, where the mallards nested.
• Nine Lives; or, the celebrated cat of Beacon Hill (Pantheon, 1951) is a 62-page children’s book by the novelist Edward Fenton (1917–1995) and illustrator Paul Galdone. “A wealthy, elderly Boston matron adopts a scruffy tomcat and while she is away on a trip her jealous butler tries very hard to destroy all nine of the cat’s lives.”

This information was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Hill,_Boston;  thus, any and all information should be verified for accuracy.